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Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Tribune archive photo
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FLASHBACK: 1968 It was a bright spot in an otherwise grim year. The day after the Chicago City Council voted to rename South Park Way after the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr, summer students at Dunbar Vocational High School Willie Thornton, Lamar Jackson and Pat Foster couldn't wait for the city to change the signs. Some aldermen had complained that King deserved more of a tribute. That came five years later when Illinois became the first state to honor the civil-rights leader with a holiday. The sponsor of that bill? Then-state Rep. Harold Washington.